What's New -SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Suite 4.0 Feature Package 3

Here is the official PDF:

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_whats_new_FP3_en.pdf

What's New in Mobile BI ?

What's new in SAP BI Mobile ?

According to the following link iphone devices are currently supporting SAP Explorer, still much to come in Feature pack 3 where also Android devices will be supported :

http://www.sap.com/campaigns/2011_08_mobile-analytics/see-it-in-action/index.epx

BI4 Feature Pack 3 Planned Features for the BI Platform

What new features awaits in BI4 feature pack 3 ?

Some Highlights :

• Call from Bex query to a web address,another Bex query (via report linking )

see here for more details :

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/Helpdata/EN/99/08629bd3e41d418530c6849df303c9/content.htm

• OEM support
• Use custom user attributes for enhanced security in IDT
• Bi Launch Pad supports theming
• SAP Streamwork integration with BI Launch Pad
• Hot full automated backup of the repository (DB +FRS )

For further reading here Tammy Powlas article :

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/27890

SAP to Deliver Integrated Social Analytics to the Enterprise

"SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase enables enterprises to create an enterprise social analytics platform that offers a wider and deeper perspective on a range of activities"...

This tool allows organizations to extract unstructured data from the web (95 million social media posts daily from Twitter, Facebook, news feeds, blogs and other sources) and by that analyse trends,feedbacks
,requests and many other data items that can bring a better understanding of the business work flow.

Watch this new Video :

SAP pays $3.4B for cloud vendor SuccessFactors

SAP is about to acquire SuccessFactors ,a provider of cloud-based human capital management tools.

In order to become a major player in the cloud and cloud BI business and compete with already in motion vendors like Oracle,Informatica,Salesforce and Microstrategy.

Click here for the original article :

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222397/Update_SAP_pays_3.4B_for_cloud_vendor_SuccessFactors

On security breach In the CMC and data leak prevention

Building permissions in the CMC is made up easy but when it comes to private folders it gets complicated.

What happens when a user sends a restricted public report to a user that doesn't have the right to see that report in the public folder?

That user will see that report because he has full control rights on his inbox object and his private folder.

There is no way to change all the inboxes right automatically through the CMC, writing an SDK script can do the work, but till this issue is covered you will remain with a security breach in the CMC.

Has far as I know this issue suppose to be resolved in the current version, I'll keep you update about that.

So what can you do in order to lower this breach as possible?

• Use an SDK script to change the inbox\private folder objects
• Allow schedule and send rights only to power users (problematic approach)
• Define the reports with the options of refresh on open + row level restriction

Still you can't prevent people from seeing unwanted data and in order to monitor the "crime level" it recommended doing the following:

• Run an audit report that will show you which reports the user accessed and which users are accessing reports that their universes are restricted to those users?
• Check who sends reports to who (using VB, java or COM scripts,3rd part tools or some audit data )
• Run periodic tests in the CMC to check the inboxes and private folders content.

What is the next generation of data security?

• Security that works in the view level and not just in the data base access level
• Alerts based on illegal user activity (just like in banks )
• Encrypted data engine based on the destination target and the user rights.

Example: if John from sales sends a sales report(through inbox, e-mail, folder and ctr) to Smith from HR the engine recognizes the permission differences and encrypts the data.

Impact Analysis in Auditor ?

Apparently you can get from the Auditor some Meta data information.

There are few drawbacks for this deal that makes the whole approach limited but for specific tests, general estimations and searches it can be most efficient.

First, what are the drawbacks?

1. The SQL data is documented but only for reports that have been edited through the query panel

if we are relating to Deski only then you can use the Rubik's cube as well.

therfore the result you will get won't be a full one.


Imagine we wouldn't have this drawback; we could make a full impact analysis on the reports.

2. This is more a basic line of the Auditor capabilities:

Auditor is only documenting live reports that have been activated during the audit, 'sleepy' reports, quarterly reports and reports that are used for single time purpose will not appear in the results, as we said it is a build in feature.

The data curve is simple:

The more you use Auditor and the more reports are being edited the more data you will get...

What reports can you write?

1. Reports Impact analysis:

This report can show you the report name, it's SQL ,it's owner and location in the repository.

By using the 'LIKE' operator we can make a search on the SQL field and ask questions like:

Which report is using a specific table, join, alias, SQL function, select clause, where clause...

2. Report select object:

This report will show you the result objects of the report.

You can ask questions like:

Are there objects that appear in different universes?

If I am about to change an object, which reports will be effected?

you have located an error in a calculated object, you want to

Locate the reports and their users in order to alert the users about this...

You can also write a complementary SDK script that will just perform the 'edit' function in all the reports in the repository,

By doing that you will achieve a much higher result of impact analysis and of course, if your company or organization can't afford a Third party tool, then script can do the job.

There are other ways how to achieve Impact analysis without buying any tools,on that i will discuss in a separate post.

Oracle Announces Exalytics - In memory and Advanced data visualization

Oracle has released it's version for In memory fast computing for BI environments

("The industry's first in-memory BI machine "...), now Oracle will also become a player in the In memory technologies market setting an alternatinve and competition to SAP HANA,Qlikview and other vendors.

Oracle press release:

http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/business-intelligence/exalytics-bi-machine/overview/index.html

A Simple Overview on SAP HANA

A good and helpfull article discussing the Architecture,In-Memory capabilities and many other interesring ideas of Hana

the article is located the sap articles section,written by Abyson Joseph :

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/00909dbb-1bc7-2e10-cda7-891e2aaedde5 

Business Objects XI 4.0 New Features - What's New?

A good summarized paper that describes the new features in XI4.0  :

http://www.erphowtos.com/sap-business-objects/20-business-objects-xi-40-new-features-whats-new.html